About the school

The school of life sciences of Lanzhou university was founded in 1999 on the basis of the botany and zoology department that was established in 1999. At present, the school of life sciences owns a state key laboratory of grassland agro-ecosystems, a MOE (ministry of education ) key laboratory of cell activities and stress adaptations, and Gansu key laboratory of biomonitoring and bioremediation for enviromental pollution. In 2008, Dr. Jia Li, who is an alumnus of lanzhou university and tenured professor from the university of Oklahoma, was recruited worldwide as the dean of school of life sciences.

The schoolis enormously diverse with faculties focusing on botany, zoology, biochemistry and molecular biology, cell biology, microbiology, genetics, ecology and biophysics. There are currently 142faculties including 56 professors, 50 associate professorand 36lecturer. Nowadays, researchers of the school are trying to use interdisciplinary approaches of biochemistry, genetics, biophysics, structural biology, high-resolution light microscopy, and other innovative methodologiesto solve problems in ecology, human health, plants, animals and microbes. A number of high-level research resultshave beenpublished in top-tier journals such as PNAS, Ecology Letter, Plant Cell, PLoS Genetics and Current Opinion Plant Biology.

There are currently 1419 students including 640 undergraduate students, 502 graduate students, 277 PhD students, 54 international students and 26 postdocs. The alumni of the school are well-known for their diligenceand strong ability in scientific research and innovation. More than 20 alumni has been elected as theacademicians of Chinese academy of sciences(CAS), scholars of the Yangtze riverprogram, winners of the national outstanding youth fund, and the scholars of 1000 people program.A number of alumni hold faculty positions overseas, including Prof. Zhi-Yong Wang at Stanford universityand Pei-Zhen Ming at Duke university. Outstanding alummi also include Prof. Hong-Bing Shu at Wuhan University, Prof. Kang Chong at CAS Plant institute, Prof. Wei-Cai Yang at CAS genetic and developmentalinstitute, Prof. Yong-Biao Xue at Beijing genomics instituteand Prof. Li-Xin Zhang at CAS Plant institute.